


Knots in a Tangled Web

by BlackEyedGirl



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Canon-Typical Violence, Friendship, Gen, Hijinks & Shenanigans, Snark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-26
Updated: 2018-12-26
Packaged: 2019-09-27 19:30:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17168000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlackEyedGirl/pseuds/BlackEyedGirl
Summary: Five lies Duck told with mixed success, and one that wasn’t worth rolling.





	Knots in a Tangled Web

**Author's Note:**

  * For [implicated2](https://archiveofourown.org/users/implicated2/gifts).



> AN: I'm currently behind on episodes (up to Episode 15 at the moment) so this might be canon divergent beyond that, but it's probably only spoilery through Episode 11.

“Oh!” Aubrey says. “Did you try the amateur theatre group one?”

“What now?” Duck asks, distracted by just how terribly that went.

“Just, you know, that one works sometimes. Maybe because, it could be because you don't make it up fresh every time and then keep adding more pieces to it until the whole lie completely falls apart?”

“Thank you, Aubrey,” Duck replies.

“I was just trying to help.” 

Duck sighs. “I know. I’m sorry, Aubrey. I did, in fact, use the amateur theatre excuse.”

“Oh. Did it work?”

“Well, she didn't question the cape, so there's that. Mrs Zabel definitely believed what I was telling her about our production of Henry V.”

“But...?” Aubrey asks.

“But now we're meeting up next week so we can practice running lines and she can give me notes on the St Crispin’s Day speech.”

Aubrey puts one gloved hand to her mouth but it’s not enough to keep the giggles from spilling out. She asks, “Do you need me to help you learn the lines? For my show, I had to learn my monologue bits so I could probably give you some pointers. Or do you think she might forget? I mean, she is a little old lady, I’m sure she talks to lots of forest rangers about Shakespeare.”

“Ruth Zabel hasn’t forgotten a single conversation she’s had her whole life,” Duck tells her. “That woman remembers Juno’n me blaming Tony Hawk for the skateboard tracks we left in her flowerbeds thirty years ago.”

“Did it work back then?” Aubrey asks.

“It did not,” Duck says.

“Okay. Then I guess you and I are going to learn some Shakespeare. Hey, we could get some of the folks at Amnesty Lodge involved – we could actually do a play!”

This just gets better and better. 

*

 

Ned screws him over about half a minute into the conversation with the kid behind the counter in Dave's Dehumidifier Depot. (The kid is called Kal Richa and some time before all of this Duck had to rescue him and a bunch of his friends in the forest. They got their car stuck almost vertical over the bank of what had been a pond before a dry summer made it mostly a mudbath. Duck thinks the kid remembers, because he’s not really meeting Duck’s eyes. That should make this easier, in theory.) 

Ned elbows Duck and says, with too much emphasis, “And now my friend Duck Newton will tell you all about our particular needs and why we have them.”

“He will?” Duck asks. “I mean, I will.”

“Yes, you will, of course, since they’re so simple and easy to explain.” Ned manages to wink without actually moving his eyelid, which is quite the skill.

Duck takes a breath. “All right. Well. You see Kal, what we need is a part for a dehumidifier, which is why we came here, to Dave's Dehumidifier Depot, since that’s obviously the best place to pick up a thing like that. And you know, you were our first choice, so that’s a certain kind of loyalty to local business, I think.”

“The part, Duck?” Ned prompts him.

“Yeah, the part. So, the part we need is a replacement condenser, for a dehumidifier in Ned’s shop, you know the Cryptonomica? Ned here keeps some really weird-ass shit in there, so clearly they need to be kept all cool and dry, but here’s the thing: all those cases have _custom_ dehumidifiers, so if you’re wondering why we haven’t been in here before to buy one from the Depot, well that’s the reason. But wouldn’t you know it, one of the cases has gone and got itself a fault, and Ned here thinks we might be able to replace the part with a new condenser and see how that goes.”

Kal blinks at him silently for a moment. “You have the broken one?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Or do you know the model?” Kal asks hopefully.

Duck turns around. “Ned, you know the model?”

“It’s about this big,” Ned says, holding his hands apart like he’s showing off the size of a fish he caught.

“That’s not really how this works.” Kal rubs his temples and sighs. “I can sell you one, we’ve got parts out in the back, but I can’t do any returns or exchanges if it’s not what you’re looking for.”

“That’s fine,” Duck says. “Let’s go on ahead and do that.”

After they’ve paid and are walking out of the store, Ned shakes his head sadly. “That child overcharged you by at least twenty dollars. You need to be able to spot these things.”

“God, Ned, I was just happy he’d sell it to us at all. What was that about in there, I thought you were gonna do the talking.”

“If you don’t keep practicing, you’re never going to learn. Ned ‘Tough Love’ Chicane, that’s what they call me.”

“You’re not my Dad, Ned.”

“You wound me,” Ned replies. “And maybe next time, my friend, when you’re asking to pay honestly-earned legal tender for something you’re legally allowed to own, maybe you don’t need to build a whole web of lies around the transaction?”

“I’ll keep that in mind next time. Now let’s get this thing over to Amnesty Lodge and see if we can install it without killing us all.”

“We travel in hope,” Ned says, before making an illegal turn back into the road and screeching off towards the Lodge.

*

 

“You can’t tell her,” Aubrey hisses in his ear. She sprints away from him and up the steps.

Duck watches her leave in confusion. “Who am I not to tell what?”

Dani appears in front of him. “Aubrey said you needed something?”

“Oh. Yes, that’s definitely correct, I definitely needed to talk to you, Dani.”

Dani’s eyes narrow. “Unless Aubrey just wanted to distract me from something?”

Duck doesn’t know exactly what Aubrey’s doing or why she needs Duck to keep Dani busy, but he reckons they’ve already become – by necessity – the kind of team who take things on trust. He says, “Fuck, no, no, I definitely wanted to talk to you, kind of check in, see how you’re doing, how Aubrey’s doing too, how everything is with the Lodge?”

“Why didn’t you just ask Barclay?” She pauses. “Or did you mean, how are Aubrey and I _doing_?”

“I.” Duck experiences the familiar feeling of a plan slipping away from him. “Yup, okay, that. Everything good with the two of you?”

“Duck, that’s not really something I was planning on talking to you about.”

“I get that, it’s just, you know Aubrey’s a part of our team, we worry about her.”

“Tell you what,” Dani says, a curious smile playing at the corner of her mouth. “You tell me all about the theatre group Aubrey says you’re going to start up in the Lodge, and then I’ll tell you about Aubrey and I taking a couple of turns around the garden, how about that?”

And that’s how Duck spends more than an hour hashing out an imaginary amateur dramatics group with Dani, who apparently used to be pretty heavily involved in the theatre scene back in Sylvain. (“Mostly scenic design,” she says, “there’s a wonderful amphitheatre near the lake.”) She never does tell Duck about what he really hopes was a literal walk around the Lodge’s vegetable garden.

When Aubrey comes back downstairs, she sneaks to Dani’s side and tugs on her hand. “Come with me please?” Dani laughs as she walks away with her, but Aubrey turns halfway around and makes eye contact with Duck before mouthing _thank you_ , pressing her hand to her heart.

*

 

Ned says, “Well, that shouldn’t have worked.”

“I’m not so sure that it did,” Duck answers.

Ned shrugs. “We got her to leave us alone with the kiln, didn’t we?”

“I mean, sure, but now I have to come and talk to a classroom of sixth-graders next week. I can’t talk to kids, Ned, you know that.”

“Children are easy,” Ned says casually. “You just tell them the most horrifying story you know and let them get excited about how cool you are.”

“That’s not really... you’re not planning on having any kids of your own now, are you man?”

“Oh, God no.”

“Okay. Good.”

Ned continues, “But it’s a good strategy. You didn’t ever find a body up in the woods, or had to fight off a bear or something? Kids love that kind of thing.”

“I’m going to go ahead and assume you mean _before_ the Pine Guard.”

“Of course, of course,” Ned says.

“I mean, I guess so. Not sure that’s really going to make me very popular with Miss Charlie, after she was good enough to let us borrow this kiln.”

“Hey,” Ned says, “if she didn’t have the foresight to specify exactly what kind of presentation she wanted for her eleven-year-olds, I think that’s on her now, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, man, but we have to live in the town with these people, we can’t just go-”

Ned rests a hand on Duck’s shoulder. “If it helps, I was there when you were trying to explain this. I am fairly sure nothing you say in that classroom is going to make her think any more strangely about you than she already does.”

Duck’s not sure how that’s meant to be a comfort.

*

 

“It’s okay,” Duck tells Aubrey, whose eyes are bright with tears, falling and streaking down through the ash on her face. “You know me, I’m tough, barely felt it. Just see if you can rustle someone up to get this thing off the top of me now, would you?”

“I can’t just leave you here,” she says, “what if it falls down more and you need me to blast it away?”

“I’m fine, honey,” he tells her. “And Ned’s here, so he can, I don’t know, drive his car at the tree if it comes to that. It’s all good.”

“Promise me you’ll be okay,” she demands.

“Absolutely,” Duck says. “I promise.”

She swallows and squeezes his hand tightly before running off to find the fire-fighters. Duck hopes they have equipment that’ll lift what feels like half the forest off his chest and legs.

Ned’s mouth twists wryly. “I’m just going to go over there and make sure they send a couple of paramedics too. Maybe some very strong painkillers, okay friend?”

“You know, I’d really appreciate that, man.”

(Later, Duck loses consciousness twice in the ambulance and when he gets to the hospital they rush him into surgery to deal with the internal bleeding. He recovers four times faster than the doctors were expecting; Duck tells them he just has an excellent immune system. Afterwards, Aubrey punches his shoulder extremely gently and whisper-yells at him extremely furiously, and she’s probably not going to trust any more assurances Duck gives her about his health, but it was worth it to drive that frightened look away from her face.)

*

 

“I hate both of you,” Duck says firmly.

Ned nods with equanimity. “That makes sense. Would you like a hand out of there?”

Aubrey says, “And then I could warm you up, maybe? With my fire?” She snaps her fingers, sparking a little flame into life and extinguishing it again. “I’m going to work on controlling it better.”

“I mean it,” Duck says, “my life was okay beforehand, fuck, it wasn’t always great, but I was getting by okay, I didn’t have to listen to that damn chatty sword, and I didn’t have to wonder whether my destiny is just falling into different bodies of water around Kepler.”

“That one’s really more _mud_ currently,” Ned observes. 

“Just pull me out of here.” Duck grabs Ned’s hand when it’s extended down to him, and he climbs out of the pit. The mud is caking him from head to toe, and they’ve lost the damn abomination again, so much for Duck’s tracking skills.

Ned goes to the car and comes back with something swinging from his hand. It turns out to be a container of water which he – without a warning – upturns over Duck’s head before saying, “You’re welcome.”

Aubrey only mostly swallows a gasp and stretches out her hand towards Duck. “Let me...”

Duck blinks the water from his eyes. “Aubrey, are you one hundred percent confident you’re not going to set me on fire?”

“No,” she says. “Let me do it anyway.”

“I wish to God I’d never met either one of you.” 

Aubrey casts a tiny floating fireball and starts to direct it nearer to him, moving it up and down. “You are such a really terrible liar, I don’t know how you were ever a teenage boy. _Were_ you ever a teenage boy? Was the destiny thing the problem? I’m going to make this fire bigger now.”

Duck thinks about telling her that that she shouldn’t be trying to dry him out with magic fire, or that he meant it about wishing his new destiny didn’t include these two assholes, at least one of whom is definitely out-loud laughing at him right now. But anything he could say or do to make her believe that last part is an action he’s just not willing to take, at least not any more. So he settles for Aubrey smiling brightly at him and manipulating fire too close to his body, for Ned giving a running commentary on the different types of monster videos they could be faking online with Duck as the Mud-Man, and accepts this one part of his fate.


End file.
